chris erdman

Some disliked my choice of wording in a previous post.

When I say, “When you’re Real, you don’t mind being hurt,” it feels to them like I’m saying, “you don’t care that you’re hurt”—suffer, no matter, what comes your way.

I do not mean to say anything like that. If a woman is being abused, it would be wrong for me to suggest she should not care about being hurt. She should care and so should the rest of us. And she should do what it takes to end the abuse, move away from it, get help, seek justice, stand up for her God-breathed dignity—and us, with her.

When I say that “you don’t mind being hurt,” what I mean is that you want to get to the point where you’re no longer getting hooked by your thoughts over and over again, obsessing in your mind about the wrong done to you, living unconsciously about the way your thoughts can drive you into a doom-loop of cognitive captivity.

My focus is your thought life. If with your feet you must walk away, if you need to protect your body, then by all means possible, do so.

And when you’re free and have the safety to do so, then enter into a healing process so you can learn to let go of the outrage that can fester and hold you prisoner to the abuse you once experienced. Relinquish the resentment. Give up your grievance. You can do so, by becoming aware that of the fact that you will suffer, but your suffering doesn’t have to define you. No one wants to suffer, but all of us will—some of us in awful ways. And I do not intend to minimize or render people passive to the inhumanity of some forms of suffering.

Instead, I want to invite you into a way to be honest about your suffering, while not tolerating the kind of suffering no human being should have to suffer.  The resurrection of Jesus means at least this:  Life is at work in you and will not rest until you are fully alive, fully free.  So, you should no longer tolerate abuse.  Neither should you let suffering define you, imprison you, or keep you suffering over your suffering.

Unless you learn to stop suffering over your suffering, the abuse will never stop, even if you’re now living in safety. The abuse has just moved inside, into the realm of your mind. Your abuser is no longer outside you, but inside you. The thoughts of your mind have become the abuser, and your mind is much more difficult to escape.

This site focuses on awakening the spiritual life.  Frankly that’s easier said that done.  Sometimes there are forces at work in us that make awakening on our own pretty damn tough, if not downright impossible.

Holy Saturday seems an apt time to reflect on the nature of depression and the spiritual life.  We live most of our lives somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  And for millions of people clinical depression can make us feel so far from Easter that it’s announcement of life’s triumph over death seems little more than whistling in the dark.

The recent and tragic death of a cherished friend has made me more more aware and sensitive to the effects of depression, as well as the dangerous and debilitating stigma we still attach for mental illness.  We must work much harder to remove this stigma, and find ways to stand with and support suffers and their families so that clinical depression is no longer a hidden and isolating disease.

Here’s a link to a remarkably candid and healing interview on Speaking of Faith—one of my favorites podcasts (you can download the MP3 or just listen to in on your computer; see the links under the photo banner; it reads like this: SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:18) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:00) ¦ » Podcast).  If you prefer, here’s a link to the written transcript.

In it Krista Tippet not only engages a few remarkable people who explore their own experiences with depression from a spiritual perspective, but she shares her own journey through the darkness.

I commend it to all with the prayer that a thin ray of Easter’s light may break in upon us and help us find healing—both in us and through us.

The life of prayer carries us into the way of the Cross. It’s a stripping, a nakedness, and a dying.  But who wants that?   Nobody . . . unless letting go of all this also involves a receiving.  You’ll only detach yourself from what you hold dear if there’s a compensating attachment to Something greater.

On this Good Friday (good, because the way of death leads to Something greater, the fulness of Life itself) here’s is a meditation from St. Bonaventure that invites you onto this path.  This way of “darkness, not daylight,” dying, silencing, and nothingness “carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love.”

If the conventional ways aren’t working for you, if you know suffering and darkness, if death’s come near, and what’s dear to you has been pulled from your hands, if you’ve got more questions than answers . . . you’re closer to God than you think.

Seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine;
in the longing of will, not in the understanding;
in the sighs of prayer, not in research;
seek the bridegroom, not the teacher;
darkness, not daylight;
and look not ot the light but rather to the raging fire
that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love.
Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness,
silencing our anxieties, our passions,
and all the fantasies of our imagination.

The embrace of suffering baffles most of us.  We view it as weakness—for in our modern world suffering is an enemy.

But suffering is reality, and to suffer is to be human.  So embracing suffering is about embracing your humanity—becoming real.

This is beautifully put in the children’s tale, The Velveteen Rabbit, when the toy Skin Horse says to the toy rabbit : “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”

Suffering’s not about becoming a doormat, letting people do cruel things to you, ignoring your rights or the rights of others. Instead, suffering is about letting go of the outrage that only strengthens your ego.  For when you mind being hurt your ego feeds on the resentment you feel.  And when it’s fed long enough and has gotten big enough your suffering, turned to resentment will, in turn, inflict suffering on others.  You become part of the cycle of violence.

You will suffer, no matter what you do to try to keep yourself from suffering.  What you do with your suffering will either damn you to a life of anger turned to festering resentment toward others, or it will humble you and make you real—that is, human, and deeply compassionate.  You may no longer have what you thought you needed to live the life you wanted.  You may have to let go of what you thought you could not live without.  But you are still alive, still breathing, still capable—in fact, more capable—of true love.

“When you’re Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”  That’s an extraordinary freedom—a freedom that woos us this Holy Week.

To be united with Christ in his Passion means to suffer with him.

To be united with him, you cannot wield power as most others do. Anger has no place. Controlling others is excluded. Leadership is inverted. The ways of worldly leadership are unmade. You learn to suffer rather than protect yourself, to serve rather than be served, to lose rather than win.

But to what end? Does the “end” even matter? Is not interest in outcomes an invitation to arouse the ego?

To simply live as Jesus does, rather than to live conditionally, calculatingly—this is the center. You are to wield only the power of secret prayer. It is this glorious humiliation of yourself, this holy emptiness, that runs with—not against–the true grain of the universe, the real current of creation’s flow.

Theologian Ray Anderson has penned an important, yet little known book that is help for all who are struggling with broken hearts, wounded souls.  Judas and Jesus: Amazing Grace for the Wounded Soul is helpful not only for those who are facing the darkness of their own despair, but also for those who love them and try to walk beside them.

It’s particularly relevant in these difficult times.  It’s a good resource to help us move forward in at least one of the directions I charted out in my recent sermon after the tragic death of a friend who was haunted by severe depression.

About the book, Eugene Peterson says: “As theologian and pastor, Ray Anderson courageously probes the Judas experience in order to help us get in touch with the depths of despair and hopelessness within ourselves.  He finds there, where we often least expect it but should dare to embrace it, the forgiveness of Jesus, the grace of the risen Christ.”

When faced with a tragic loss, I stand before twin choices. I can either resist the pain that comes with loss, or yield to it. There’s no middle ground.

While I’ve never lost a job or my sanity, I have lost my mother, my marriage, and most recently a friend who was closer to me than a brother. All three are tragic, life-defining losses. Crippling. But not debilitating.  In fact, the opposite.

With each loss there finally comes a strength within that rises in the vacuum. With each loss, I may have lost what I thought I could not live without, but I’ve never lost myself, never lost God.  Instead, the crippling is a severe mercy; the limping, a freedom.  Loss brings me nearer to that essential nothingness that is my truest self before God.

Loss is essentially cruciform.

Am I poorer now, or richer?  Am I less, or am I more?  Am I wounded, or am I free to simply be?

My heart still beats, my lungs still breathe.  And even if they ceased, the “I” that is beloved of God still lives.

And so . . .

I sit in silence on the edge
that is the vast abyss
of my nothingness

before God.

I linger there
quite self-aware
when suddenly He gives a nudge.

I’m

f
a
l
l
i
n
g

now . . .

groping,
grasping,
for anything.

There’s nothing
but a glassy wall
and howling silence as I fall.

I’m

f
a
l
l
i
n
g

but . . .

I’m losing what
in falsity
I thought myself to need and be

until there’s nothing left of me
to sit and care
if this is some odd tomb
or blessed womb

of God

Here’s a link to my sermon from last Sunday.  The text was Luke 13.31-35—Jesus facing death threats and unflinchingly pointing to his suffering and coming death.

The sermon’s a protest against the powers of death particularly in light of my dear friend’s recent and sudden death (Jamie Evans, left).  It also addresses the ongoing and disastrous stigma of mental illness and depression, the importance of self-care, communal support for those struggling with mental illness (at whatever level), and challenges dangerous misunderstandings of God’s treatment of those whose pain drives them toward suicide.

You can find and download the message by clicking here.  There are two versions, thematically the same, though I’m told I made different emphases in each.  Click here for the second service.

You can also download the sermon Jamie and I preached side-by-side on “The Grace and Art of Friendship,” March 22, 2009—click here.

Grieving the sudden death of a friend who is closer than a brother.  Jamie Evans. A remarkable human being.  Deeply missed.  I’m practicing what I teach and reveling in the exquisite gift of each breath, the beauty of each face.

So, here’s a re-post from the past that speaks to this moment in my life.

Seeing Beauty in Our Suffering

Suffering is inevitable; it’s what we do with our suffering that matters. We can’t avoid it, so why not do something constructive with it? What if we were to look deeply into our suffering and through meditation–earnest examination– glimpse the flowers that can grow from the composted garbage of our suffering? Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, says that without disciplined deep looking, we see only our pain and fear. We are absorbed, even consumed by it.

But in deep looking we can also see the fruit our suffering will bear. We see with the eyes of the Gardener, who prunes and feeds the vines through suffering (John 15). And through the eyes of the Gardener we see grapes and peaches, tomatoes and blueberries in the unwanted garbage from the kitchen—for the garbage has become rich, dark compost.

So, I sit in prayer, and turn over and over what could otherwise be only garbage. I enter my heart and feel the ache of fear and sadness, and I turn it over gain. I may even have to hold my nose at the stench, but I do not flee. With the eyes of faith I see flowers blooming, squash and beans and other things that delight eye and tongue.

On this, then, Buddhists and Christians are on the same page, for they both know that from death comes new life, from suffering comes beauty—these are two sides of the same coin. The one is necessary for the other. In every pain and loss is a new beginning.

I don’t have to create the flowers. God has already scattered their seed in the compost of my despair. But I do have to look, to cultivate a seeing eye for the beauty inside every brokenness. That is hard, hard work.

In response to the post, What if God is searching for you? Hunter writes, “It’s a difficult thing to understand and remain open in the midst of life experiences that can be painful.”

Hunter, I’ve borne my share of the kind of pain that could shut me down, make me cynical, closed, even bitter. But I wonder if staying open and vulnerable is really as hard as we often think it is. I wonder if it’s more difficult not to open ourselves; if it’s harder to stay closed up. I mean, in my experience, it really takes work and effort to put up walls, grow thick skin. The inner self obsesses, thoughts cycling through my mind.  My mind seems to gleefully enjoy peddling my anxious thoughts around in circles, keeping me focused on being a victim or wanting to have some other reality than the one I’m living.

I find I suffer when I feel I am entitled to some other kind of treatment. I suffer when I want something else or to be somewhere else.  I suffer when I want something other that what is.

I don’t mean to minimize the pain people like you and I face, but I’ve tasted those moments when, instead of being elsewhere mentally or wanting something else, I am fully present, vulnerable, free to live in this moment.  I’ve tasted remarkable freedom when I don’t believe the little stories my thoughts are trying to sell me about myself and others, about my situation, and so on.

Love is difficult because our minds don’t want us to give in to love. Oh, they like the idea, but not the reality. For love by-passes the mind, shelves it for awhile.  The mind must sit before love which welcomes all things trustingly, and desires only what is and not what would be, could be, or should be.

I think it’s actually easier to love than to build walls. It’s easier to remain open than our controlling minds want us to believe. St. Paul said that he had learned to be content regardless of the circumstances (Phil. 4). He didn’t allow himself to identify himself with any thought. Fully identified with Jesus Christ–”dead” to his false self–he was free to live in love.

Hunter, I hear some of this is your comment. I hear you inching yourself toward the freedom of love. But like us all, your mind gets in there and says, “Watch out. Guard yourself.”  The little bugger gets us peddling in cramped little circles again, round and round the petty worries that keep us stirred up. It’s little wonder we’re exhausted.  Keeping the walls up around a well-castled self take a lot of overhead.

But when I love, I find I’m never tired.